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User Perspectives Blog Posts

User Perspectives Blog Posts

Biofuels are recognized as a valued source of renewable energy, with applications ranging from heating buildings to powering transportation. Increasing the availability of these fuels requires an understanding of the processes behind biomass conversion. With the help of COMSOL Multiphysics® simulation software, researchers at NREL are seeking to optimize such processes, making biofuel conversion more efficient and cost-effective.

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3D printing has emerged as a popular manufacturing technique within a number of industries. The growing demand for this method of manufacturing has prompted greater simulation research behind its processes. Engineers at the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) have identified their customers’ interest in a particular additive manufacturing technique known as shaped metal deposition. By building a simulation app, the team is better able to meet the demands of their customers while delivering more efficient and effective simulation results.

Categories

Today, we welcome guest blogger William Vetterling of ZINK Imaging to the COMSOL Blog. If you read the 2015 edition of COMSOL News, you may have seen my review of the newly released Application Builder. In that review, I shared an example of a simple thermal model of an IR microscope that we had created a year earlier for use in our laboratory at ZINK Imaging. Now I will share how we turned that model into an app.

Categories

At Boeing, innovation comes in the form of modern aircraft such as the 787 Dreamliner, whose body is made up of over 50% carbon fiber composite. While incredibly lightweight and strong, such aircraft composites are not inherently conductive, thus requiring additional protective coatings to mitigate lightning strike damage. Here, we describe how multiphysics simulation is used to evaluate thermal stress and displacement in the protective coatings that undergo temperature fluctuations associated with the typical flight cycle.

Categories

Previous work on cloaking for flexural waves in elastic plates presented limitations and near invisibility. Now, a research group in Europe has figured out a new theoretical framework to both overcome the limitations and achieve exact cloaking for flexural waves in Kirchhoff-Love plates. To visualize and test the quality of the cloak, they ran COMSOL Multiphysics simulations.

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Billions of dollars are spent each year in the U.S. to repair corrosion damage. To help reduce the high cost of corrosion, engineers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C. are using multiphysics simulation to gain a better understanding of the fundamental mechanism. A successful research outcome at NRL will establish the correlation between metal microstructure, corrosion, and mechanical strength. Material designers could then develop stronger, corrosion-resistant materials using this new information.

Categories

You may know of Boreas, the Greek god of North Wind, but did you know that it’s also the name of a German team for Formula 1 in schools? This is no coincidence; it describes their strong will to develop race cars that are “as fast as a storm”. With this spirit and COMSOL Multiphysics, the team won several qualifying races, reached third place in the 2014 world finals, and was honored with the innovation award for Research and Development.

Categories

Solar energy is created by combining sunlight with a semiconducting material, often silicon. But solar, or photovoltaic, cells require such a high-quality silicon that the manufacturing process is complicated and costly. As a photovoltaic material producer and furnace manufacturer, EMIX turned to COMSOL Multiphysics® simulation software to optimize their cold crucible continuous casting (4C) process and create the silicon needed for a more efficient solar-powered world.

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Today we welcome guest blogger René Christensen from Dynaudio A/S. When evaluating loudspeaker performance, dips and/or peaks in the on-axis sound pressure level can be a result of an unfortunate distribution of phase components. To overcome this, we use a phase decomposition technique that splits a total surface vibration into three components depending on how they contribute to the sound pressure in an arbitrary observation point; either adding to, subtracting from, or not contributing to the pressure.

Categories

The communication network wasn’t designed to carry the amount of traffic that is currently transmitted around the world on a daily basis. With the rapid expansion in data traffic and the exponential growth in high-speed communications, the current network is coming under increasing strain. At Bell Labs, researchers are looking into ways to improve energy efficiency through the use of optimized electronics cooling and energy harvesting technology. Two new energy-savings approaches developed by the group promise significant savings.

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Micromechanical sensors are crucial to many standard commercial products in nanoelectronics and nanomechanics. These are sensors that are so small they operate on the nanoscale, with parts measuring in billionths of a meter. Researchers at the University of Alberta are exploring ways to find the effective mass — the mass of a particle when reacting to a force — of micromechanical sensors in a faster way. This measurement is key to performing thermomechanical calibration.

Categories

3D printing has emerged as a popular manufacturing technique within a number of industries. The growing demand for this method of manufacturing has prompted greater simulation research behind its processes. Engineers at the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) have identified their customers’ interest in a particular additive manufacturing technique known as shaped metal deposition. By building a simulation app, the team is better able to meet the demands of their customers while delivering more efficient and effective simulation results.

Categories

You may know of Boreas, the Greek god of North Wind, but did you know that it’s also the name of a German team for Formula 1 in schools? This is no coincidence; it describes their strong will to develop race cars that are “as fast as a storm”. With this spirit and COMSOL Multiphysics, the team won several qualifying races, reached third place in the 2014 world finals, and was honored with the innovation award for Research and Development.

Categories

Today, we welcome guest blogger William Vetterling of ZINK Imaging to the COMSOL Blog. If you read the 2015 edition of COMSOL News, you may have seen my review of the newly released Application Builder. In that review, I shared an example of a simple thermal model of an IR microscope that we had created a year earlier for use in our laboratory at ZINK Imaging. Now I will share how we turned that model into an app.

Categories

Solar energy is created by combining sunlight with a semiconducting material, often silicon. But solar, or photovoltaic, cells require such a high-quality silicon that the manufacturing process is complicated and costly. As a photovoltaic material producer and furnace manufacturer, EMIX turned to COMSOL Multiphysics® simulation software to optimize their cold crucible continuous casting (4C) process and create the silicon needed for a more efficient solar-powered world.

Categories

At Boeing, innovation comes in the form of modern aircraft such as the 787 Dreamliner, whose body is made up of over 50% carbon fiber composite. While incredibly lightweight and strong, such aircraft composites are not inherently conductive, thus requiring additional protective coatings to mitigate lightning strike damage. Here, we describe how multiphysics simulation is used to evaluate thermal stress and displacement in the protective coatings that undergo temperature fluctuations associated with the typical flight cycle.

Categories

Today we welcome guest blogger René Christensen from Dynaudio A/S. When evaluating loudspeaker performance, dips and/or peaks in the on-axis sound pressure level can be a result of an unfortunate distribution of phase components. To overcome this, we use a phase decomposition technique that splits a total surface vibration into three components depending on how they contribute to the sound pressure in an arbitrary observation point; either adding to, subtracting from, or not contributing to the pressure.

Categories

Previous work on cloaking for flexural waves in elastic plates presented limitations and near invisibility. Now, a research group in Europe has figured out a new theoretical framework to both overcome the limitations and achieve exact cloaking for flexural waves in Kirchhoff-Love plates. To visualize and test the quality of the cloak, they ran COMSOL Multiphysics simulations.

Categories

The communication network wasn’t designed to carry the amount of traffic that is currently transmitted around the world on a daily basis. With the rapid expansion in data traffic and the exponential growth in high-speed communications, the current network is coming under increasing strain. At Bell Labs, researchers are looking into ways to improve energy efficiency through the use of optimized electronics cooling and energy harvesting technology. Two new energy-savings approaches developed by the group promise significant savings.

Categories

Billions of dollars are spent each year in the U.S. to repair corrosion damage. To help reduce the high cost of corrosion, engineers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C. are using multiphysics simulation to gain a better understanding of the fundamental mechanism. A successful research outcome at NRL will establish the correlation between metal microstructure, corrosion, and mechanical strength. Material designers could then develop stronger, corrosion-resistant materials using this new information.

Categories

Micromechanical sensors are crucial to many standard commercial products in nanoelectronics and nanomechanics. These are sensors that are so small they operate on the nanoscale, with parts measuring in billionths of a meter. Researchers at the University of Alberta are exploring ways to find the effective mass — the mass of a particle when reacting to a force — of micromechanical sensors in a faster way. This measurement is key to performing thermomechanical calibration.